


only connect (the happy ending was imperative remix)

by fleece



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pre-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 20:19:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7588627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleece/pseuds/fleece
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two girls who have become dear to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	only connect (the happy ending was imperative remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bladeCleaner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/gifts).
  * Inspired by [make the world new again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128678) by [bladeCleaner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladeCleaner/pseuds/bladeCleaner). 



It’s not quite near dawn when you come too close to switching your lipstick on a friend. Horror haunts you regularly. It's Not A Big Deal.

After you register that the person present on your doorstep is not a zombie, your relieved mind hops on the whirl of a chainsaw to end up in a completely different genre, that is, romance, where nothing is quite said for stretches of time and the narrative distracts its plot with details that may be relevant to Some Trolls but bore you awfully; on Earth such details would be the perch of a wig or the style of one's cravat (and even the Mail Coach Tie is not known as such to you—Alternia, lacking mail, named it Waterfall Tie instead), but as you are into fashion, troll romances would clearly pin down something other than personal style. So you end up focusing instead on the green grass bursting from between the bricks of your garden path.

"You have colorful decorations!" Aradia says, miming craning her head to look at your fluttering banners, your topiary coming into their dim-season colors. Then her eyes come to a rest on you, which you hardly notice, because you are still frozen staring at the ground like a new hatch getting carried to a preliminary culling site. "And you're colorfully decorated, too. It's so odd how you imitate being your hive with the sash on your dress. Who would think of something like that? Just you, I think." There's a smile in her voice.

You finally pull your eyes up and don't see how she's managing the airy words. She's not dressed for a daylight return, you note at the same time as you are horrified by how her exposed limbs are a mess of rust blood. Her shirt's shredded while her intact skirt is slowly dripping.

"May I come in?" she says. She's swaying a little, hands behind her back like the model grub in schoolfeeding, but she's still patient. She's smiling like a blueblood you've entertained in similar condition. She's smiling as if she had all the time in the world. 

Your brain is an insistent klaxon but it seems disconnected from the rest of your body, so you talk instead of moving. "What happened to you?" you ask. 

Aradia shows you her hands, the green viscera. She says, “Make bones out of that!” and laughs uproariously at her joke, which is entirely too inappropriate for someone in such a state of injury. She laughs, and it’s steady, teetering on the edge of hysteria but never committing to the full dive into that wretched frenzy. You want her to stop. It's ballooning. Will you fall over? “Come in,” you say.

She does, reigning in the laugh to a giggle as she staggers into shelter.

“Do you have any food?” It’s carelessly said. Aradia could be dropping in for tea, not dripping a trap’s worth of blood. The dissonance dizzies you. Something inside your guts comes up and grabs your throat from the inside, making it even more difficult to think, and you say, a little angry but not at all sure why, “Obviously, as I’m not a zombie, but a live troll, I have food in the hive. It won’t help you if you bleed out while dining-- in brief, you seem to be dying. You will get food in exchange for letting me tend to your injuries.”

It's a simmer inside of you. You put your hands on her shoulders and steer her unsteady body to the washblock before she can say anything.

“Did your wardrobe explode in here?” Aradia jokes, putting down the lid of the gaper and gingerly sitting down on it, peering at all the black cloth you left soaking in the trap.

“That’s prewashing,” you say, trying to hide how green your face is by heaving the fabric into your sink. You're soaked through now, and your dress might be a loss. Trying to keep the pile straight just embarrasses you worse; about half of it falls on the floor. “So the color doesn’t run in the final garment.” By now you’re so used to answering her every question—you can't remember if she asked this time but continue anyway. "If I incorporated this into an otherwise white dress, for example, the dye would leach and spoil the design. Especially since pre-made fabric is usually manufactured from unpure grub skin solutions. The quality is not acceptable as-is." 

Gravity insistent, more fabric slaps wetly down. You give up and start draining the charcoal water in the trap, ignoring Aradia’s pasted-on grin.

You lean against the wall with your hands behind you. Instead of looking the eyes that studying you, you watch your own body instead. You feel cool air come through your nose and your thorax rises in response. A moment of suspension (try not to think of her sitting there, try not to—), then, your airsacs push wide your thoracic bone maw and warm air runs out.

The last of the dark water gurgles down the drain to an otherwise silent room. You wait a while. So does your guest.

“You have to take your clothes off, you know.” Your voice is steady.

“Oh, right,” Aradia says, shucking her skirt and undershorts off. She scrabbles at her top and you hesitate for only a few seconds before you intervene to, essentially, tear it off of her. As you set the scraps aside, you look her over. You wouldn't describe her wounds as gaping, but they are fairly serious. The journey to your house must have been slow, or she might have delayed; many of the rips in her flesh are covered by worms of congealed blood, and the rest that you assume flowed freely before has dried into continents over her torso. As steady as a wounded troll can be, she leans over and turns on the tap, then gets in. You suppose it’s stupid to think that ripping clothes off would always result in swooning. Even if she does look half a ghost, or a lusus’s warning for wigglers. On her back, blood and dark bruising obscures the grey skin like a desert civil dawn.

You remove your box of mediculling supplies from a storage compartment and half kick half shove it closer to the trap. Aradia has sat down in the trap with the water running from the elevated head, eyes half-closed, only a little of the blood washed away. You cap your claws and reach for her.

It’s careful work to remove grime from inside her wounds, peel the gnarled crusts of blood from the edges, and seal them shut with cyanoacrylate medical adhesive. You rub ointment over her bruises, scrape out the olive remnants from under her claws, wipe down her hands with a handkerchief, settle her into your red dress.

She’s eating the snack you gave her (light, she’s just had a great shock) when you ask Why Me.

Aradia’s not as fanged as Vriska or even you, with a lowblood’s even teeth, but it’s attractive, the steady rhythm of the white points in her smile. It’s not like her teeth need to advertise what you already know about her. You feel a phantom grip on your throat as she speaks, barely catch half of what she says.

“I trust you to be in one piece, building, making things, when the rest of us are best at taking down what we can get our hands on.”

There’s a very uncomfortable ten seconds the narrative has the insensitivity to acknowledge.

"I." You say.

"that was-" Aradia stammers, flushing like a mountain sunset. "That was so inappropriate! I know, you're with Vriska, I'm sorry, I-"

"I trust you too," you feel your jaw opening to say, the air moving easily from your airsacks to slip past your fangs, the words let out in the still, cool air of your hive.

Aradia looks as stunned as you probably did a couple of hours ago when she first showed up.

“I can’t. I can’t save Vriska from anything. But-” the words keep slipping away like sand. Your whole body is searing as if your flesh is exposed to a fire inside your body cavity. “I could build you back up. We could- make our lives. Not just charge through them.”

Now you can’t read Aradia’s face at all.

“Vriska-” she starts, and then stops at your contorted expression, reaction to- who, now? Someone whom you realize you will do nothing for and will not give you what you want. Your face must be a sight. The only thing you’re conscious of is your bared fangs. You both breathe, a few times, Aradia shallowly, you heavily. Your blood is angry in your ears. She flees.

Without her injuries the two of you would be evenly matched. In the moment, though, you catch Aradia by the hand, and she sits down with a thump on the receptionblock floor and starts bawling.

“I- didn’t- mean!” she chokes out.

You sit down with her, and you pat an uninjured part of her arm with one hand and stroke her hair with the other, while she keeps trying to say something. It’s very undignified. Romances usually skip the slow awkward parts that would drag you through a fog of discomfort where you have to fight to stay calm and breathe. You know your life isn’t a book, though.

You stay calm. You breathe. The moment stretches out forever, until you can’t bear it. You rest a hand on Aradia’s arm. You reach for her face, shaking.

“If you expose your bones to me, I’ll have only broken anything,” she finally manages, not looking you in the eye. “I’ll have destroyed you and Vriska more surely than a death would.”

Because you are afraid, you move very slowly. You rest your fingers’ knuckles on her cheek.

“Do I need to show you my bones for you to know I’m already whiter than the stars for you?” you say. Your cheeks grow verdant as your brain catches up to your mouth. If she asks whether or not you pulled that from a novel, in truth you wouldn’t know the answer. You are five, and feel very young, not to mention foolish, and continue, “Vriska breaks me but I can hold you together. If. I mean to say,” you stammer, as you see her mouth start to curl. “If I’m done with her- that is. I won’t let you be a gwai always in the corner of my eye. I’ll wreck it, for you. Since I know you can build too, it’s not just me, not just like you told me.”

Aradia looks at you through her red-powdered lashes but doesn’t say anything.

“When you- search, when you witness those things from history? That’s making something- your experience, your life worth living.” You bite your lip as your voice falters. How can you explain? Your hand falls a little from her face.

She ends up taking your hand, gently, in her hands that you cleaned with your own, and kisses it.

Waterways aren’t your area of expertise, but as you have a basic familiarity with most plants, you think the color in your face could be well compared to an algal bloom.

“I don’t really need so much conciliating, really,” Aradia says, still holding your hand, looking so openly into your face that you’re sure your body is going to fall apart with the sensation of being pulled in all directions. Even with a kiss, you feel like it’s too much to hope for. She must find your held breath in your eyes, since she brings your hand to her bloodpusher, not bothering to angle your claws away. “But- but, oh, I’d be glad to let you take a little care of me.”

“Okay,” you say. You lean in to kiss her back, on her forehead.

“You’re so,” she tries, and yawns. “So gentle and cold. A pool in the desert.”

“And I’ll shelter you from the sands if you want to sleep,” you say, and support her to your couch. You draw the curtains to hide her from sunlight over the horizon and fetch water from the meal block to put in her reach.

“I’ll just nap a little,” Aradia assures you.

“Of course,” you say, and sit down to put your arms around her. 

“Does that hurt?” you ask. “No,” she says. She leans into you, and in a few minutes her breathing steadies.

It’s a quiet morning. The day is barely begun, you’ve gotten Aradia Megido to sleep, and, wondering, you rest your cheek against her horn.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from e.m. forster's howard's end, remix name taken from his notes for maurice


End file.
